Entre la "urbs" y el "fundus": conmemoración funeraria y honorífica de las élites locales hispano-romanas en sus propiedades rústicas

Abstract

In this paper we try to show the close relationship kept by the members of the families belonging to the Hispanic municipal aristocracy with their rustic properties. Many local aristocratic members, being rural possessores, had to spend their time between the urbs, where they developed their public life, and their fundi, from which they obtained the economical resources which allowed to keep themselves as members of the municipal ordines decurionum. The funeral epigraphs and the statuaries erected in their homage, found in the rural territory of numerous cities of Hispania, reveal the desire of many local noblemen to be buried within their rustic ownership, or to exhibit their merita in the pars urbana of their villages. That is the proof that their life took usually place between the city and their rural properties.